I am not giving early employees equity, going market rate salary instead. But you can totally issue shares as an LLC though. In fact they are more flexible. You could add more rules or regulations around it.
Investments from family and angels do not need to be equity, it could also be various debt instruments. In these cases no tax magic to worry about, it stays very simple.
Perhaps my boat is different because from day 1 I was 90% not planning to get VC money. If your plan is 90% from day 1 to get VC money, then I guess you would want to optimize that path.